


Red Sky in Mourning

by Foxfire74



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Gen, Pre-Series, passive-aggressive lion is passive-aggressive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-01
Updated: 2017-06-01
Packaged: 2018-11-07 20:15:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11066319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Foxfire74/pseuds/Foxfire74
Summary: The Red Lion waits. Not patiently.





	Red Sky in Mourning

When her paladin dies, Red tries to scatter with the others and wait as planned. But without that fierce, familiar mind at the controls and with the Black Lion’s shock and grief howling along their bond, she falters, tumbles, and finally drifts under a shower of energy beams from the Galra fleet. Little fleshlings rope her with tractor beams and truss her in bonds of metal and energy.

She does not move again for thousands of years.

Transferred humiliatingly from one garrison, one warship to the next, she does not stir. He-who-was-Black’s has betrayed them all; worse, he’s shattered her sister’s heart. She will not give him the satisfaction of a reaction, not the smallest flicker of light or twitch of a cable.

With no mortal bond to mark the time, years blur into an uneasy doze for Red. He-who-was-Black’s sends engineers, soldiers, even cubs in an attempt to learn her secrets, and she ignores them all. Sometimes he comes himself - braced for battle at the start, till her continuing stillness wears him down to complacency and then past that to constrained frustration. _You shall have nothing of me._

Time is nebulous, but after several such visits, it occurs to her that a mortal should have worn out by now. Curious. Not worth breaking her silence for. He’d broken all their bonds; what other laws might he not flout? She settles deeper into dreams of battle, leaving only whisker-thin tendrils of energy to alert her when the once-paladin comes.

His appearances dwindle; years to decades to centuries. Usually he comes with a pack of lesser predators, all fawning or cringing according to their natures; once alone, standing in the doorway and staring, as still as Red herself. “I would have made you all _great,_ ” he mutters finally, and turns away with an explosive burst of air.

And again, decades later. “I know you’re not dead,” he said, standing at the edge of her particle shield. “Not even dormant.”

She can feel him faintly, a double-distant taste of emotions through the remains of his paladin bond. Confident menace, a powerful, calculating mind...baffled rage, that the creature closest to him had not bowed to his will. The bond with Black was not quite severed, and he still bleeds. Red savors it.

“What would it take, to make you bring the Black Lion to me? I’ve offered you pilots, tried to override your systems...shall I burn worlds until you submit? What would it take, to bring you to my service?”

_Love my sister again,_ Red growls in her mind. But she wouldn’t say it if she could. His love was false coin, and Red would not permit him to offer it again. If he succeeds somehow, if he finds Black once more, she will break her stillness once and for all, and watch the false paladin _burn._


End file.
